Norma's story; 'This is my reality.'

Realistic Medicine; What?Why?How?

Kate: So we're on episode four now of this podcast, which is called Realistic Medicine. What? Why? How? And we're really be lucky today to have Norma Davidson with us, who is a resident here in the Highlands and has been a patient and a member of the community and is a really prominent member of the Highland Senior Citizens Network. And so Norma is going to kindly share some of her story with us today, which will be really helpful. So, welcome, Norma. Thanks so much for joining us. Tell me a little bit about yourself.

Norma: Well, first of all, you've already introduced what my name is, so the first is I grew up in the Highlands of Scotland, all over, but I ran away from home when I was 14 and pretended I was 16 and joined the QARANC, Queen Alexandra's Royal Army Nursing Corps in England. And from there I took ill when I was in the army and they had to do the very first operation on me that I'd ever had in my life, where they found I suffered from anaphylactic reactions to many anesthetic drugs. So under British law, you couldn't be in an armed forces with that because you'd be a danger. So I threw a dart into an atlas and it landed in a country called Rhodesia. So I packed up everything and just went to Africa. When I got there, I joined their military, which was combined forces, but carried on with nursing training and we would work with casualties, evacuating people out. I learned to fly an airplane and land it in case the pilots got shot, because this was a wartorn country. And this carried on to about the late 1970s. And then in 1979, I hit a landmine where everything changed because it was then found I became an incomplete quadriplegic. After everything settled down, I can move sometimes. I've got no sensation in a lot of parts of me. Every time I take an anaphylactic reaction, it causes swelling in the body and when that swells up, it also seems to cause problems in my spine as well. And it can take me ages to start getting movement back after each episode has gone, been cleared and I'm out of ICU. Can take months. I eventually got transferred back to Britain in 1986 and that was when local NHS and things got involved, because, yes, I was an incomplete quadriplegic and it's a CTC five. But I shouldn't be defined. That doesn't define me, who I am, it's what I can achieve. But then I was taking anaphylactic reactions to everything around me. I was in one hospital for 90 times in one year with anaphylactic reactions. So it was decided they were going to try and work out what was causing this. And they realized that I had what was called hereditary idiopathic and acquired angioedema, which all turned into anaphylactic reactions. The physical side of me, the disability, I can cope with. But that's the side that takes over everything, because you go to hospital, you'll take a reaction when you go through the door. Doesn't matter what you were going in for, they deal with the reaction get you out, realize, oh, we haven't done tests, we haven't done anything. I had a fantastic doctor later on who then took over and said, we've got to work a plan because I was falling through cracks. And we then started with a different way of keeping me all together. And that's just roughly, in a nutshell, probably 40 years all come together.

Kate: Wow. What a fascinating journey you've had. And then what do you enjoy doing in life now back in the Highlands?

Norma: Anything that, as you can see, I like activities, I like action. Doesn't matter what it is. I like to be a dare devil. I've always been a dare devil. So even now, even in my wheelchair and everything else, as people in the Highland Senior Citizens Network know, one of their staff is traumatized. When a few years ago, with NHS, we had people from NHS and the government, but I decided I wanted to go to the skate park in my wheelchair and they did a film for NHS and I did it. And I finally got to the very top of the park, which nobody's ever done in the wheelchair, but they forgot to pull the camera through back, to stop me hitting the camera through. I pushed my wheelchair around to fly off the top and crash landed on the floor. And I was just so excited going yes, yes. But everybody was running, thinking, she's broke her neck proper this time. So, yes, I still like to, even if it's the tiniest thing in the house. And I can't move that day as long as I've done something that I can do, I've done something.

Kate: Yeah. That's amazing. You're braver than me, that's for sure. You don't catch me in skate park.

Norma: I don't do that now. But that was about four years ago, was the last time we were out.

Kate: So tell me a wee bit about what's most important to you, particularly from the delivery of your health and your care. What's important for you?

Norma: Well, the main part, I think the whole lot would come under one heading of this is my reality and keeping it real in my care. To me, it's got to feel you've got sufficient time with the carers or the doctor, whoever's dealing with you, that they see you not as the problem, but they see you as the person. And we then are able to work forward individually to try and work on what needs to be done. And that is the most important thing of all, is that we're seen because often you're not you're just you're a number.

Kate: Yeah. And you're obviously very experienced and eloquent in the way you get yourself across and confident, what advice would you give people who maybe are new coming into healthcare? I meet a lot of patients and people coming into the system, and they've maybe been previously healthy and they've had a bad diagnosis and they feel so worried about asking questions and about asking to be seen as an individual. So I'm on a bit of a crusade with my colleagues and there is a kind of global movement trying to make sure that health care people are asking, like, what's important to you? What's important for you, your goals for life and for us, you've had any kind of treatment, but how do you think we get our patients and the people using our services to feel like, empowered, to be as active as you are?

Norma: Well, to start with, what you see now is what has taken years to finally get to this. When I first became physically disabled and everything, probably for the first 20 years, I wasn't seen, I wouldn't speak out, I would be very quiet and fell through many, many cracks. And you felt you couldn't speak to the doctors, they had to make the decisions, they had to do this and you just had to go along with it. What made the big difference for me was when I finally got to talk to a doctor. Where they actually didn't have their back to you while they were talking to you. Because normally they're on a computer or they're writing in a book where they're actually facing you and make you feel. I can actually talk to this person because they're facing you. They're looking at you and you think. Oh. Maybe I can talk about this problem. Because when you go to the doctors, you go in and the doctors are often very busy because they've had another patient, so they're finishing up the notes on that, or they're busy trying to sort your notes and then they ask you with their back to you, what's the problem? And you think, Well, I've got this, but I don't know, should I talk to you about that? I should have talked about this. Like now when somebody's looking at you, you can open up and say something and then the conversation can start. Until then, you just sit there and say, oh, well, it's this, and get out as quick as you can because you're so uncomfortable. And yet you think, oh, I should have said this, I should have said that.

Kate: You almost need to go in with a script. I'm a doctor, but I've also been a patient, and I totally feel that feeling of almost like panic and pressure to get the right words out in time. And obviously, we're like, GP appointments are so short and I ...